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Then he said, "Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar. It will be a touch of realism." "Thank you," answered Evan. "You are very kind." And he began to smoke in the cab. The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the chief powers of the modern world. They had satisfied the magistrate, they had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the police behind.
And it was with the end of a long speech from MacIan, passionately defending the practical achievements and the solid prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the open land. MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the cloudy hills of Arisaig.
MacIan might possibly be a gentleman, they felt; the editor manifestly was not. And the editor's fine rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police quite as much gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done. The police were not used to hearing principles, even the principles of their own existence.
Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smiling and motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly: "So MacIan converted you?" Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet. "Converted me!" he cried. "What the devil do you mean? I have known him for a month, and I have not retracted a single "
Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal and continued quite easily: "I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees and does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things which, on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers."
The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to hide an awful smile. "And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not God?" MacIan screamed. "Ah!" he cried. "Now I know who you really are. You are not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once."
"For that, my lord," said the glover, "I can be at no loss, since I have just title to the protection of the high Highland chief, Gilchrist MacIan, chief of the Clan Quhele." "Nay, if thou canst take hold of his mantle thou needs no help of any one else: neither Lowland churchman nor layman finds a free course of justice beyond the Highland frontier."
Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the trap. "Mr. MacIan," he said, "I understand that we have now definitely settled that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action must at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted conditions. That, I believe, is understood." "Perfectly," replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said again: "It's a very big place. When I first came into it I was frightened of it. Frightened exactly as one would be frightened at the sight of a man forty feet high. I am used to big things where I come from, big mountains that seem to fill God's infinity, and the big sea that goes to the end of the world.
I never saw a man tremble so, and he turned white to his very lips. Papa, have you read 'The Fair Maid of Perth'?" "Yes." "Don't you remember MacIan, the young chief of Clan Quhele? This character always made a deep impression on me, awakening at the same time pity and the strongest repulsion. I could never understand him.
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